KOTORtype
by Laluzi
Summary: How would events have panned out if Alex Mercer was present at Peragus? A series of snippets; Prototype x KOTOR II.
1. Overview

So, hi! You came here expecting a chapter and you got an author's ramble. Terribly sorry. I won't do it again. I was leery of doing this it all, but I figured I needed a dichotomy, what with this not being a structured story. If you don't care, just skip this 'chapter'.

These are drabbles, and will not be finished into a coherent story. The story is marked as 'complete' because of that, although I might add more snippets from time to time. Basically, some events where Alex Mercer is in KOTOR II. Honestly, I haven't worked on these for a pretty long time… but I figured they were decent enough to enjoy, and I recently rediscovered them. They aren't directly linked to each other, and some might assume knowledge of events that didn't happen because I never wrote them, but for the most part, they're in chronological order.

Here's the background. This story ignores Star Wars' timeline, because I'm really not sure where KOTOR time lines up with present-day earth, so it goes with the following undoubtedly incorrect assumption. Mercer was working as a miner on Peragus before the facility's destruction, simply drifting around the galaxy as an aimless wanderer. This was about five hundred years after the Outbreak; at this point, considering how wide the galaxy is, what happened in Manhattan is an obscure legend at best. Alex, being what he is, doesn't age, but Dana Mercer died a long time ago - and he never really settled down after that.

I gave character 'bios' for interactions, most likely because I'd probably never get far enough to show them interacting, and I at least felt like getting these thoughts down. I'm going with the Light Side Female party, to follow the main character I used for the purpose of these drabbles.

So, here's the cast and how they'd get along with everyone's favorite viral abomination.

Now, Mira is pretty awesome. Love that girl. Honestly, now that I've played Prototype, she reminds me a lot of Dana, except with physical capabilities to match the snark. They even have pretty similar voices. She'd probably be wary as hell of Mercer, but I get the feeling he'd like her - partly for Dana similarities and partly because she's a badass bounty hunter with a knack for explosives. Alex likes explosives. He also respects badassery, so I figure he'd like her enough. As for Mira's thoughts towards Alex... that's more murky. Time would tell, for that one. It'd probably be unrequited. Mira's wary, and also, Mercer's _modus operandi _could not be farther from hers.

Mandalore/Canderous and Mercer would get along like two peas in a pod. I picture them sitting at a table, drinking and swapping war stories and expressing their manly joy in watching things explode spectacularly. Not sure if Mercer drinks, but you get the picture.

Disciple… There's nothing going on there. He's kind of a pansy, and his studies don't interest Alex at all. Disciple's probably afraid of him, Alex is disdainful.

Since I'm using a LSF party, the Handmaiden doesn't come into play as a party member; nor does Hanharr.

Visas... it'd interesting how she first reacts when she sees Mercer via Force Sight, but other than that, I just can't see them interacting much. I know that she's troubled by revenge, which Mercer sympathizes with, but the two characters just don't resonate with me. I wish they did, but they don't.

HK-47... Another case of Mercer realizing there are people/things worth knowing in the universe. HK can join him and Mandalore at the table. Meatbags... Mercer's like, _finally__ somebody who_ understands. They would totally hit it off, much to everyone else's dismay.

G0-T0 - I sense thorough mutual dislike here. G0T0's the head of a massive organization, something Mercer has crappy experiences with, _and _he only joins the party after putting the player through his little slice of hell in the form of a ship filled with crazy bounty hunters and _mines everywhere_. Mercer, on the other hand, is a chaotic wildcard with enough power to seriously screw up intergalactic events if he so tries. G0T0 does not like this. At all. I mean, he's expressly stated that he doesn't care whether the Sith or the Republic win, and that he just wants stability. Mercer is anything but stability.

Atton: At first, he distrusts Alex, just like he distrusts pretty much everyone else. This relationship turns around when the crew discovers what Mercer is. Now, that sounds a bit cracky at first, because finding out your co-worker is an eldritch abomination is a bit of a turn-off, but it goes like this. Once he's uncovered, Kreia makes it no secret that she thinks Alex is little more than a beast and a slave to his instincts. As such, she treats him as subhuman. Once this enmity between them is unearthed, Atton and Alex become... not close, but more like partners-in-hating-Kreia's-guts, because Kreia always had it in for Atton like nobody else, and treating Alex like an 'it' is going to get you on his bad side, real fast.

Also, expect a lot of snark.

T3-M4: Can't think of anything. He's a droid, and not a psycho like HK. Alex doesn't really notice him more. Neutral - neutral.

Kreia: Extreme tension. Alex hates Kreia. Like, utterly loathes. He refuses to do anything with her, even if the Exile asks for them to cooperate, and will do pretty much the opposite of what Kreia asks or implies. For example, he will make an effort not to blatantly _kill everything _as he is so wont to do, just because Kreia called him a mindless killer and he feels a need to disprove her. The only thing that stops him from killing the hell out of her and desecrating the corpse is that Force Bond thing between her and the Exile; death for one is death for the other, and Alex likes the Exile. Kreia believes Alex is little more than a tool and an animal - a whirlwind of destruction you set out upon your enemies, but other than that, a creature that can hardly think for itself. Once his nature is out in the open, she will plainly tell the others exactly what she thinks of him, openly flaunting around things Alex would really rather not share - such as him having to struggle not to lash out and kill everyone, all the people he's killed, you know, little things like that. Oddly, this will actually make some of the others like Alex more, because pretty much everyone hates Kreia, and when she says black, the crew choruses white.

Anyway, enough of this... and on to the snippets.


	2. I'm Back

Alex Mercer had decided that today had been a very good day.

The assessment may have come as a bit of a shock, had he spoken it aloud and had anyone been alive to hear it. Indeed, it seemed rather atypical and ill-suited to anyone else who had found themselves in his predicament. Then again, the key words were 'anyone else'. They always were; it seemed to have become a defining property of his existence over the years. Anyone else would have been completely screwed over, but he was having a much better time than usual.

He was, after all, one of a kind. And as he watched the clunky machines patrolling the central terminal below him as he dug his barb-tipped tentacles into the natural ceiling, he found himself quite pleased with the fact.

It had been a long time since anything _interesting _had happened. Leaving Earth hadn't exactly been a difficult decision, all those years ago. Dana was dead, and Blackwatch was hell-bent on making his life miserable wherever he went. It was just the obvious choice - he had no ties left to that rock, and leaving it was convenience.

There'd been no shortage of wars to be found on an intergalactic scale, but he had found himself shying away from them rather than leaping into the fray. It had nothing to do with self-preservation - there was simply _nothing _like the thrill of wreaking absolute destruction - but rather pragmatism, something he'd picked up during his years. At first, he considered it prudent to not draw attention to himself in case Blackwatch was setting its sights outside their home planet, but time and information he gleaned through his rather unique means both proved that trepidation null and void. However, Blackwatch was hardly the only organization that would have a problem with him. Keeping a low profile was the best way to stay alive and unhindered.

He'd drifted from planet to planet and system to system over the centuries, shedding names and identities like day-to-day clothing. Whenever complications arose or anyone displayed more interest in him than he was comfortable with, he would simply vanish, and several hours later, another person would step out of the ether onto another planet and start anew.

Peragus was one of the less pleasant lives he'd settled into. That wasn't to say it wasn't a convenient one. Here, nobody knew anyone, nobody asked questions, and nobody cared. He was hardly the only straggler who'd come to the mining station, keeping his head down and kicking dirt over a past he'd rather not share. Plenty of the other miners had things to hide. He knew the look, knew the way they walked. And for once, he was actually wearing his 'normal' form - it hardly looked out of place here, and he honestly preferred his old jacket and face for some sense of nostalgia. No, a sense of identity.

He'd been mining low-grade fuel for about a month and a half now, keeping himself in line and uninteresting. Already, he was considering leaving. He certainly didn't need the meager credits his job raked in, and a closed facility on a dead planet made his diet rather difficult to sustain. The only living beings around were people, and when people went missing, investigations followed. And besides, he was bored out of his mind.

Then today had happened.

Things had been going on as usual - scouting the rock faces for any signs that might betray a deposit, while suffering several ambient annoyances. The heat was sweltering, the usual dull roar was echoing in his thoughts, and two of Coorta's self-styled group of retards were discussing in obvious whispers about the Jedi that had just been taken into the medbay. That was another reason why Mercer was considering packing up. Passing as a human - or whatever alien of the day he found prudent - was child's play in most situations, but past experience had taught him the hard way that Force-sensitives could see right through his guises. They didn't know _what _he was, but he seemed to stand out like some sort of abominable beacon to whichever Jedi were nearby. And most of them had seemed to want to kill him.

Personally, Alex Mercer neither understood the so-called Force, nor really cared about it. It was inconvenient for him in some situations, and he couldn't use it to his own advantage - even after consuming a few Jedi, he still hadn't found himself able to harness it. A shame, since the idea of shooting lightning bolts out of his hands appealed to him.

His own self-preservation aside, Coorta's group was bothering him simply because they were a pack of idiots. He'd killed many Jedi, but he respected their prowess, and he doubted that the mercenary's gang of two-bit pistol thugs could take on whoever this Jedi was, even if he or she had both hands tied behind their back. It was just going to fall apart, and he really didn't want to get thrown into the spotlight.

One of the conspirators had started screaming. A quick look behind him showed him that one of the mining droids was hacking him apart. Alex was amused.

The other miners were not so amused as, one by one, the helper droids ceased their routine functions and began to execute their mining programs upon the workers. At first, Mercer just punched the droids into so much slag, but when it became apparent that none of the other miners were alive to watch him, he decided to toss his apparent humanity to hell and proceeded to carve a bloody - in this case, oily - swathe through the mining tunnels in a manner that was far more befitting of his style.

Somebody had obviously rewired the droids, meaning somebody wanted everyone dead. Maybe it had been the Jedi. Mercer doubted it - the regular Jedi were ridiculous pacifists, while Dark Jedi usually preferred the visceral feeling of rending their foes in half with their own lightsabers. Either way, it didn't really matter. Somebody was behind it, and that somebody was going to die.

Regrettable that all of the miners - the ones he'd seen, anyway - had died, but Alex Mercer liked trouble. It had been too long since he'd had a good fight.

There was only one little snag to his current good mood. Upon reaching the southern entrance, he found it magnetically sealed shut. Five minutes and dozens of scrap heaps later, the easternmost hatch was discovered to be in the same state. If he listened hard enough, he could faintly hear the warbling of the alert sirens from the floor above. During the lockdown, the mining tunnels had been sealed off in the standard emergency sequence; a great protocol for anyone on the upper floors, but less than helpful to anyone in his current location. Even with his prodigious strength, the massively reinforced doors were beyond his capacity to tear open. Had he been more... well-fed... and less blunted with time, he probably would have been able to force his way through. But he'd lived the life of a drifter for far too long - centuries, even, following some intangible current that wound through the galaxy. Never settling down, but never rising up to the all-consuming war he had once known and lived. He wasn't keen enough to break his way out of the lockdown, and he lacked the tools to help him. Peragus had a very strict no-weapons policy, as accidental blaster fire was more than enough to ignite nearby fuel. The mining lasers he had access to were weak and generally useless. Even if the mining droids still responded to his commands rather than futilely attempting to chip away at him, they were far too feeble to do so much as tickle the door, metaphorically speaking.

As things stood, he was stuck down here, and the only way to have the seals lifted was to access a terminal that was handily located on the floor he was cut off from.

He briefly considered tearing his own tunnel through the rock and burrowing up to the main floor, but Peragus's entire consistency was notorious for its pockets of isolated and highly flammable gasses. One wrong claw and the entire facility - hell, the entire asteroid cluster - could go up in flames. Mercer liked explosions, but they were more enjoyable from a safe distance rather than at the heart of one.

So no, there had to be a more subtle way. He wasn't going to write off the tunneling option entirely, but it was a last-ditch thing, the sort of plan he'd pull off only if he was certain there was no other way to get out of the tunnels. The obvious way was to contact somebody on the upper floors, provided any of them were still alive. He'd found a commlink from another miner's body, but the thing couldn't get a signal - the wireless feed was jammed with static. He needed something connected to the facility's mainframe.

Of course, there was always the terminal below him. From experience, he knew it hardly had any functions granted to it; it wouldn't do to have any miners being able to sneak off with fuel or shut down the facility. But even with its utter lack of security clearance, it would be able to send messages.

It was surrounded by a contingent of haywire mining droids, machines made to hew ore from deeply compressed rock. Machines that had mowed down his fleshy co-workers like so much meat.

Alex Mercer loved breaking things.

Perhaps the droids had turned against the miners on the higher floors already. It seemed like the logical explanation, but he wasn't overly worried about that particular turnout. Everyone died at some point, and he'd seen far too much death to be overly bothered by fallen strangers nowadays. Besides, these droids were by no means combat models. Any experienced soldier could dispatch groups of them with ease, and he was optimistic that at least one person would remain alive to get his message.

After all, there was a Jedi in the facility.

"I'm back," he whispered to nobody in particular, and dropped into the midst of the droids with an unhinged grin that was just a shade too wide to be entirely human.

Gears whirred and mining lasers trained themselves on him. He flicked his wrists, loving the metallic rasp as impossibly long claws extended from his fingers and spiky black chitin coiled around his arms.

"Oh, hell yeah. I'm back."


	3. The Waiting Game

Deanna Vaelian shuddered as the world around her blurred and Kreia's voice echoed in her mind once again.

"Ah... beyond this door, someone yet lives... be mindful... his thoughts are difficult to read..."

She was glad when the connection between her and the older woman vanished. How somebody else had gotten into her head, she had no idea, but it was as unnerving as all getout.

Another person? Honestly, she would be glad to finally meet somebody living in this ghost facility. Even with her connection to the Force as dulled as it was, she could feel the death around her, punctuated by the cold gleam of machinery. Of course, that old woman was here as well, but something about her left Deanna more unnerved than relieved at the presence of a fellow human.

But it went even deeper than that. Ever since she'd woken up in the medbay, a strange - and by no means pleasant - feeling had pervaded her. It was elusive but blatant at the same time, like knowing a hornet was in the room but not being able to see it. When the Force had returned to her, the sensation had only intensified. It felt almost like a person felt, when she sensed life through the Force, but utterly reversed in some way. Cavernous, deep; she felt like a void lurked nearby, tugging on the edge of her consciousness. It felt like... like Malachor, almost. Like some sort of preserved death.

It only furthered her desire to get out of here.

The door slid open, revealing rows upon rows of force cages. The one by the far corner was occupied; indeed, there was somebody He didn't _look_ threatening. Just irritated. He had a narrow, wary face and rather sleek chocolate hair, and he wore a brown leather jacket over a grimy, once-white undershirt.

He turned to her, a look of nonchalant boredom scrawled across his face as he spoke. "What, finally decided to feed me? It's about damn time-"

Then his eyes practically bugged out.

"You're not wearing much," he pointed out, rather unnecessarily. He seemed a little dazed. For the benefit of the doubt, Deanna assumed that he was suffering from hunger. Or sleep deprivation. Or... anything other than what she was actually assuming. She wasn't _that_ endowed, after all...

"I noticed, thanks." The woman's voice was curt.

"Well, uh. Wow." He peered at her, then up at the top of the cage, where the field projectors were. Then back at her, as he craned his neck.

She sighed. _Men_. "Look, who are you?"

"Nobody important." The answer seemed to come to him on reflex.

"You know, I'm the one that decides whether or not you can escape. A little tact would be in order."

He sighed. "Okay, okay. My name's Atton. Atton Rand. I'm a miner at this facility, just like you. Now let me out of here. The control panel's on that wall."

She glanced at the prisoner askance. "I'm not sure I want to do that."

"I swear, I have no idea why they tossed me in this cell in the first place. I'm not-"

"It's less of the fact that you're a possible criminal and more of the fact that you're trying to stare down my bra, if you know what I mean."

Somehow, this 'Atton' managed to be affronted at that. "It's your fault for not putting some damn clothes on. It's... I mean, what, you miners change uniform while I'm locked in here?"

"Could you just answer some damn questions?" She was starting to get irritated. "Prove yourself even remotely helpful and I may find myself more inclined to set you free."

"Look, it's not like I'm not enjoying your half-naked interrogation, but..." He trailed off as realization dawned on him. "You're that Jedi. The one that they picked up a few days back."

She bit back the instinctive response she'd kept on autopilot for so many years, that she was no longer a Jedi. That had lost all validity mere minutes ago. Somehow, the Force flowed through her again; she'd lost all but the most basic of techniques, but it was _there_ again. That spanning emptiness inside her felt... filled, if only slightly. Did that mean she was obligated to return... but no, now was not the time to focus on such things. At least the man had stopped trying to ogle her.

"I only just woke up. You're the first person I've seen alive. This place is deserted."

"Alive?" From her years in the war, she knew when people were being dishonest - there were always little telltale signs to betray them, a twitch around the eyes, a tense cast. Many things about this man were striking her as off, but there was no denying the blank surprise as he took in her information. He obviously hadn't known. "What do you mean, they're all dead? I was chucked in here yesterday and everything was peachy. Well, as peachy as you can get for being jailed over violating some dumbass security rule."

"The droids I've seen in this facility have gone rogue. They attacked me, and presumably everyone else."

"Well... look, tell you what. Get me out of this cage and I can help you. If the droids have gone beserk, you could use an extra blaster, and I'm a handy shot. I know this facility; I can get us to the hangar bay. Those doors are normally kept locked down tight unless somebody has permissions from the higher ups, but if there's nobody around, I can slice them."

"Deal, I suppose. I hope I don't regret this." If she did, the rest of Atton's life was going to be very short indeed.

"Pardon me for not shaking on it. I'd rather not burn my hand off." Atton rolled his eyes. "You could go and deactivate that force field any moment now, you know."

"I'm getting to it." He was hardly the most pleasant company she'd met, but she couldn't deny she felt just a little less unnerved with another person there. There was something comforting about not being the sole survivor in a facility full of crazed machines, where some disturbance in the Force pulsed ominously underneath everything.

Atton stretched as she powered down the cage. "Thanks. Okay, let's get out of here."

He kept up with her brisk pace as she left the jail cells. "The terminal's at the center of this room," he mentioned from behind her. "You might have already seen it, it's down by the windows."

She had. She stepped carefully over the twisted bits of metal, all that remained of the hostile droids after her vibroblade had had its way with them. Atton followed less meticulously, seeing as he had shoes.

"So... what's your name?" Atton asked.

"Deanna Vaelian," she replied, the words coming out as half a sigh. "Pleased to meet you." Best that at least _one_ of them appear civil...

"You too. So, uh. What's it like being a Jedi? No family, no friends... no husband..."

She resisted the urge to put a palm to his chest and use the Force to electrify him into unconsciousness. "Ah, yes, it's terrible. No tactless suitors trying to hit on me during situations that _strongly _don't call for it..."

He cringed, but didn't say anything until they reached the computer terminal. "Here we go," he muttered to himself as he punched several buttons. His motions became notably more agitated as the seconds dragged on; Deanna frowned. That hardly bade well.

Atton's eyebrows drew into a tight scowl, and he stepped back.

"Damn it! The hangar bay's been cut off! So have the dormatories. We're practically cut off from everyone else like this. This computer can't reach the others, so there's no way I can instruct the doors to open from here. Looks like somebody reduced this thing's priority; almost all of the commands are gone."

Even so long after the war, she was still a general. There always had to be plans in the wings. "Are there any other terminals?"

"One in the tunnels, but that's where the most droids can be found, and it doesn't have any remote commands. I doubt you'd find anyone still alive there if this facility's gone as bad as you say... Hold on. Somebody _did_ send us a message from there. This didn't come through all that long ago..." The man's fingers danced over the keyboard as he called up the log.

"So somebody's still alive down there?" Deanna asked, leaning forward.

"..." Atton replied in a stunningly articulate fashion.

"Hello? Earth to Atton? Ah, whatever. Shove it." Forgoing courtesy in a distinctly un-ladylike fashion, she pushed her new companion out of the way and read the message aloud, one eyebrow lifting closer and closer to her spiky brown hairline as she spoke.

"Congratulations, you're reading this message and are presumably alive. Now make yourself useful and lift the goddamn lockdown or I'm blasting my way free.

"PS: By the way, that's probably going to make this whole facility explode. I couldn't give less of a shit, honestly."

Silence reigned for a few moments. Deanna felt compelled to break it.

"So, err. Does this computer have the access to open the seal?"

Atton scratched his head. "Knock yourself out, but I don't think I really want to meet whoever sent that. They seem a bit..." He made a looping gesture around his ear. "Off their rocker? I've only seen a few sentences from this guy and I already wouldn't trust him not to kill me in my sleep. I mean, I don't trust you, but at least you haven't acted completely psychotic yet."

"If you did, you'd be an idiot. Anyway, I'd rather let them out then have them explode the facility. Peragus is the main exporter of fuel for many Republic planets, and as an added bonus, we also happen to be standing on it."

"There's no way he [i]could[/i] blow the place up, though. The only weapons allowed into the tunnels are mining lasers. Non heat-based, very weak beam weapons. I'm sure you've seen a couple of them laying around. They don't have the kick to ignite fuel at all, and nobody can smuggle anything else down there. Security's as tight as hell in this place."

Deanna crossed her arms. "Well, I'm not leaving anyone to die down there."

"Spoken like a true, brainwashed Jedi with no sense of self-preservation." Atton gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, it was nice knowing you. Suit yourself. If you find a commlink down there, we could keep in contact." He returned his attention to the keyboard, skimming it with practiced ease. "All right, done, but that's all this baby can do for now. I can't do anything else from here. The closest entrance to the tunnels is in the corridors between here and the medbay. You should have passed them."

"Noted. Anything else?"

"No. Well, be careful down there. Not that I actually, er, care about you or anything, but it would kind of suck to be stranded here alone."

Rolling her eyes, she set off. "How the hell did I ever get into this mess...?"

* * *

><p>Surrounded by twisted metal skeletons, Alex Mercer heard the north elevator's creak as its payload descended. Checking the terminal's status showed that the electromagnets that powered the lockdown had been shut off. So somebody had gotten his message after all.<p>

"Took you long enough," he muttered.

It had been a long time since he'd been in any scuffle, but he never really _forgot_ techniques, just lost his aptitude to time. The dust had come off fairly quickly, though, and he'd cleared the central chamber in under a minute. He was happy to discover that his claws cut through durasteel with little effort, and even moreso to discover that those maintenance droids made very satisfying explosions when hurled into other droids. It was probably a serious security breach, from what he knew of Peragus's rules, but he couldn't have cared less. By the time that the last droid had fallen, he was almost disappointed as he retracted his claws. It was primal, but he wanted more enemies to dismember, _damn it_. It had been too long.

He considered walking over to the elevator, but then thought better of it. He had all the time in the world; the lockdown was clearly lifted, so he could leave whenever he wanted. No, it was best to let this person come to _him_ instead. He hadn't cleared out the northern passage; letting this unknown survivor fend for themselves would be a good way to test them. If they couldn't destroy a few worker droids, he wasn't going to mourn their loss.

But he doubted that outcome. Something was starting. Something important. He wasn't sure how he knew. Perhaps it was instincts, intuition. Hell, maybe it was even blind hope. But there was a charge in the air, something that had his tentacles almost breaking out of his human skin to wriggle in excitement. Perhaps this was just a screw-up or a random conspiracy, but the emergency at the facility felt like a precursor. Manhattan had never left him, and a renewed phantom sense of it seemed to linger around him.

He'd avoided war for far too long, but he hadn't forgotten how it felt. How it tasted.

If it was going to come to him, he wasn't going to turn it down.


	4. An Unlikely Alliance

The first thing Deanna felt upon the thud of the elevator's landing was another wave of unease. What had been a previous nagging in the part of her mind she was re-recognizing as the Force had grown significantly as she'd descended into the mining facility's depths. A nauseous sensation curled around her stomach - what the hell was going on here, that _she_, the General, would actually remember the taste of bitter fear?

Shaking off her discomfort, she surveyed her surroundings. The path ahead was a straight one, with a plasteel container located conveniently in front of the next door. She rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension as she made her way towards the cylinder. She was dangerously low on supplies - low as in equipped with nothing but a veritable bikini, a few medpacs, and a shoddy sword. She'd been notorious for improvisation once, but at this point, she wouldn't have said no to a few more materials to work with.

A quick rummage revealed one of the small communications device that Atton had mentioned. She lifted it and flicked the power switch, putting it to her ear; she recoiled at the blast of static that assaulted her. After fiddling with a few controls, though, Deanna had the machine quieted down enough to hear a familiar voice floating through the speakers.

"Hello? Earth to Jedi, you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," she replied. "Just landed down here. Damn, it's hot."

"You'll get used to it. I'm getting a pretty crappy signal - it looks like somebody's sending interference across the wavelength. I can hardly hear you."

The same went for her - she could barely make out his words through the static. "Same to you. We shouldn't be able to talk at all, but I know a few failsafes." Yes, she'd worked with her fair share of hacking into enemy lines during the wars...

"Then let's make it quick," Atton advised. "So you found a commlink. Good. How are things going down there?"

"Like I said, just arrived. Haven't seen any droids yet. Found some supplies... there's some clothes in here, too," she mentioned pointedly as her search uncovered a blue-and-brown uniform, which she quickly donned.

"Damnit!" he swore without thinking. Deanna smirked to herself as he flailed wildly in a poor attempt to cover up his faux pas. "Uh, I mean, good, good. The half-naked thing was getting a little distracting. Er, I mean, for the droids. Distracting for the droids."

"You could just shut up," she advised.

"Hey, hey, I'm a man, what do you expect..."

"Look, if you don't have anything useful to say, I should probably get back to the task at hand here. I need to stay on the lookout."

"Good point. I'm tracking your position through the tunnels; if there's something you need to know, I'll contact you. This place could be pretty dangerous if all the droids are berserk. The basic models won't give you any trouble, but the newer models - you'll know them when you see them, they're bipedal - have combat programming by default, and they're hardier. Oh, and don't use your Jedi mumbo-jumbo to start any sort of fire down there.

"Understood. Deanna out."

The commlink deactivated with a brusque brush of her fingers, which wrapped themselves firmly around the hilt of her vibroblade moments later. It was an old weapon, nothing fancy, and she'd scarcely had it for an hour, but already it felt secure and welcoming in her hands.

It was a tool of war. Just like her.

Old and ragged, worn and left to rust, but suddenly given a purpose as it was thrust back to the realm it could call home. Regaining its old prowess with a vengeance.

It had always troubled Deanna that after the Mandalorian Wars, as she'd wandered, peace had no longer suited her. She knew she'd never given in to the temptations of the Dark Side, never fought solely for the purpose of fighting. She'd... even at Malachor, she'd done what she'd needed to do, where no other options were to be found. She'd relinquished her heritage and lightsaber to the Council without a struggle, trusting their wisdom even as they stripped her of everything she had left. But the years that had followed were forlorn and terribly unfulfilling. The war had changed her; perhaps the reason this void she felt now in the Force unnerved her so powerfully was because sometimes she thought she could feel a little of the same within herself.

But now... there was no time for rumination. Only to fight.

The door slid open, and behind it, several guns immediately focused on the center of movement that approached.

And a small smile quirked the hard line of her lips. "Bring it."

* * *

><p>"The terminal is up in the room ahead," Atton's voice crackled over the commlink. "Our mystery guest is probably in there, if he's still alive. Probably not. You can bet there's going to be a lot of droids. Get ready for a fight."<p>

But as Deanna turned the corner and entered the middle of the mining complex, the first impression she had was one of deafening silence. The whirr and hum of machines that she'd become used to was absent. Besides the occasional thrum of fuel making its way up the four pipes that served as the room's corners, it was as quiet as the grave.

The sense of dread she'd felt ever since waking up at the station was reaching a climax; it was almost overpowering her, pressing against her mind's space. It screamed of something horrible and _unnatural,_ and it felt so close that she would have sworn it was in the same room as her, reaching out to smother her with its presence.

She looked up, and there was a man.

He stood in the center of the cavernous room, leaning against the terminal seated on the bridge. Nearly silhouetted against the orange glow of the fuel pipes, he wore a dark leather jacket and a grey hoodie; the cowl was drawn up and covered the top half of his visage. From under the rim, two piercing blue eyes watched her, seeming almost inhuman in their intensity. For a second, they might have widened fractionally, but if he was surprised, nothing else belied the sentiment. Faded jeans covered his legs, and what little could be seen of his skin was deathly pale, like a plague victim. The faint orange glow from the fuel pipes played strangely across his complexion, giving an ever-shifting and eerily organic cast. He appeared unarmed - no holster or scabbard was held or tied to him, and his pose was casual, not battle-ready in the least.

But the Force cried out some warning of danger, and the ground around his feet - no, the entire room - was strewn with bolts and sheets of metal. The droids here didn't look like they'd been dismantled with a vibroblade, but rather the claws of some savage beast. Some scraps had been twisted and torn with impossible force, and many of the remains bore three deep, parallel gouges like a terentatek's talons.

She could sense his level gaze on her; he made no move to approach her, nor did he speak up. He was calculating... sizing her up. And leaving the first move to her.

She swallowed. Force abomination or no, she wasn't going to provoke whatever manner of being stood before her. Through more effort than she'd have liked to admit, Deanna kept her voice steady. "Are you the one that sent the message?"

He inclined his head, shadows falling further across his chiselled face. "Yeah. And are you the Jedi that all the miners have been talking about?"

She hesitated; she'd heard of Force-preying creatures before, and the sensation he emanated spoke of a devouring void where the Force should have flowed naturally. It was possible that he was scoping out prey, and that he'd followed her here. She was bitterly aware that Force Sensitives were few and far between these days, even though she hadn't known she still fit into the category until about an hour ago.

He noted her trepidation with a smirk. "Ah, you don't have to deny it. I can tell. You've got this look on your face. It's the same way all Force Sensitives look at me, like they're halfway between passing out from illness and passing out from fear. You don't need to worry, though. You let me out of this place, and one good turn deserves another."

So there was no need for pretenses. "Then what _are_ you?"

"An ally. I could also say I'm the most damn useful asset anyone could ever have without exxagerating. I generally don't volunteer my services, but I'm bored as hell, you lifted the lockdown, and you're capable enough to take down a few droids, even if it took you a ridiculously long time. Look, I'll help you get off of this rock. There's a ship in the hangar bay, a pretty impressive one at that. After we're on it, you can drop me off on the first planet we pass by and you'll never have to see me again."

She hesitated. He was obviously avoiding the question, which couldn't mean anything good. "You might have wanted to send a more tactful message," she mentioned evasively. "Somebody less altruistic than myself probably wouldn't have felt compelled to rescue somebody so impolite."

"That _was_ asking politely. Trust me, you don't want to see the other option."

If she was honest to herself, she didn't, even though she had nothing more to go on than a rather creepy appearance and an absolutely terrifying presence. He _looked_ human enough, but she trusted her instincts, and they spoke of anything but.

"So." The man straightened up and stepped towards her - each movement was light and practiced, but Deanna couldn't shake the sense of a massive beast advancing as he made his way across the bridge. "Yes, or no?"

At the same time, she needed all the help she could get.

"I'm definitely going to regret this," she muttered. Deanna blinked once, hard, and when she reopened them, her brown eyes were steely with determination. "All right. Follow me, then, mister..."

The grin that crossed what was visible of his drawn face was distinctly sharklike. "Mercer. Alex Mercer."


	5. Explosions!

_BOOM!_

The sudden sound rocked the Ebon Hawk - literally. A great pulse of energy sent a sudden heave through the departing ship, nearly knocking several off their feet. The cockpit's five occupants - three human, one a droid, and one a clandestine eldritch abomination - shared a long glance. Well, T3-M4 gave a long 'bwoooo', but it had the same intended effect. They'd been weathering attacks from the pursuing warship for a while now, but that hadn't felt like laser fire.

Deanna was the first to break it. "Was that-"

Another concussive blast rocked the Hawk, this one far more powerful. A glance towards the side windows showed a massive orange starburst blooming in space's dark void like a rose from hell.

"Fuck!"

"Dammit! Who the hell fired on the asteroids!"

"Nice job breaking it, Jedi," Atton roared as he slammed down on the Hawk's controls, sending loose articles sliding violently as the ship veered left around an igniting chunk of Peragus II.

"Hey, I didn't fire the cannon, it was that Sith ship!" the young woman shot back. "We don't have anyone manning it!" She pressed a hand to her temple. _Think, think - _but that was considerably hard to do when she was years out of practice from her days strategizing, about five seconds from losing her life, and T3 was letting loose a stream of high-pitched staccato beeps that were not helping matters at all.

Mercer, meanwhile, seemed in unusually good spirits for one frantically trying to escape a field of exploding planetoids. He was almost bouncing on the balls of his feet, face glued to the cockpit's side window.

"All right. I'd like to remedy my earlier assessment of this being a good day. This is an awesome day. This whole thing is fucking awesome!" he demanded, pumping one fist, the emphasis he placed on the last word befitting a child with a new toy.

"What the hell is _awesome _about this?" the ex-Jedi hissed through gritted theeth, her knuckles white as she gripped the dashboard. "We're in the middle of a chain reaction of mini-supernovas, a thousand credits says we're all going to die, and even if we do make it out of this, we're going to be heavily implicated in this facility's destruction!"

Alex Mercer was not interested in her silly complaints. "Boom, there goes another one," he crowed. "And another. It's like a fucking race through a minefield, except better! Damn, I wish I got to see this more often."

Atton flashed Deanna a look askance, a look that _plainly_ said _Why the hell did you have to pick up this guy?_

"I really have no idea," she answered aloud, one eye twitching. "Now pay attention or we're all stardust."

"Indeed, it would be a travesty to die here, when your journey has merely just begun. So much that still needs doing, events that may coalesce or fall apart without your touch." That was Kreia, speaking up from the corner. She seemed curiously unrattled by the predicament. Obfuscatingly cryptic as ever. Deanna was tempted to put a fist through her face, but that would mean letting go of the panel that she was holding onto for dear life.

"Shut up, hag. I'm trying to concentrate," snapped Atton.

"If we survive, it will be attributed to fate, not the piloting skills of an incompetent imbecile," came the barbed retort.

Mercer continued to make gleeful and somewhat unmanly sounds from his demented slice of nirvana. Was that a _squee_?

"Shut _up!_" Deanna exploded, accidentally releasing a Force-based electrical pulse with the outburst. It worked, even if T3-M4 recoiled and started sparking for a few minutes; at least it got all mouths shut and eyes focused on her.

"Just... just shut the hell up and get us out of here," she finished, somewhat lamely. "You can get back to your petty arguments and batshit tendencies after we're sure we're not going to be fried, okay? Kreia, stop pestering Atton. Atton, pay _attention_. Mercer, get your ass away from the window and help Atton pilot. T3, please, _shut up_. And _everyone_, get your priorities straight!"

The ship jerked to the side again as the crew's roguish pilot steered them through a cluster of exploding asteroids and a slew of several blaster cannons' payloads.

"But..." That was Mercer, again. "There aren't going to be any all-consuming chain reactions of planetary ignition later. I mean, what you're suggesting is a waste of a perfectly good sightseeing opportunity."

Deanna just stared at him. Now both eyes were twitching.

With a sigh, he complied, plonking himself down in the co-pilot's chair - it buckled slightly, the man had to be heavier than he looked - and calling up the navigation charts, correlating them with the ship's inbuilt sonar map for nearby obstacles. He handled the flaps and acceleration while Atton steered them through the galaxy's deadliest obstacle course - once her heart had stopped hammering, the ex-Jedi had to admit that the two made an excellent piloting team, even if at one of them seemed to detest the other, and the other one was some Force-abhorrent god-knows-what with tendencies that leaned far enough off the destructive side to go toppling into the abyss beyond. Of course, the two had no experience working together and both of them seemed to want to take the lead, only managing to cooperate via clipped demands and occasional insults... But both of them were apparently very skilled pilots. Skilled enough to avoid all of the bursting Peragus-bits even while shouting at each other.

After one very action-packed and nausea-inducing minute, the ships' maddened motion calmed.

"We're at the edge of the field. We can enter hyperspace now." Mercer didn't seem overly happy about it.

"I know, you pyromaniac," Atton snapped. "Don't tell me how to do my job."

As the stars around them melted into streams of quicksilver, Deanna had a brief moment to reflect on her situation. During her many years, she had voyaged on many ships with motlier, more ragtag crews than anyone could possibly dream up... but she had to admit, this was the strangest yet.


	6. Ruminations

"So we're going to Telos _why_, exactly?"

That was Alex, lounging in one of the main room's chairs, his elbows propped on the round table in an ultimate gesture of insouciance. With the Ebon Hawk securely on course, the group had relocated to a more spacy chamber, and were now seated in a scruffy circle.

Atton was agitated, and it showed. "I told you this already. Peragus's charts - the ones we took - didn't have any other planets en-route. We can either go to Telos or wander aimlessly through space. Take your pick."

The virus sighed. "Doesn't matter. One planet's as good as the next. I make good on my promises." The Jedi flashed him a strange look, something he couldn't place. His scowl deepened. He detested feeling off-kilter. "I'll get out of your hair soon enough."

"You seem awfully eager to get out of here," Atton pointed out.

"Is there something wrong with that?" he retorted.

"Maybe, maybe not. I've seen you before." Atton's eyes were dark with suspicion. Alex ran his tongue over his teeth. He knew this one; Atton Rand had been one of the miners he kept a more cautious eye on - not out of any real sense of fear, but the instinctive wariness a predator watches another, lesser predator with. He hadn't been one of Coorta's group, but Alex knew somebody with a shady past when he saw them, and Rand had set off more alarm bells than he cared to count. He had the look of a killer.

"Of course you have," he replied smoothly. "I was one of the miners at the facility. We were in the same dormitory. Alex Mercer."

"Yeah, I've heard that name on roll call. But don't think I'm getting all buddy-buddy with you just yet. Were you part of Coorta's group?"

Mercer snorted. "That pack of idiots? No. Whatever happened to those morons, they're all dead now, so I figure they learned their lesson. Saves me the trouble of doing it myself."

The brown-haired man was not pacified. "I find it just a _little _suspicious that such an experienced merc and blatant head case as yourself kept a stunningly low profile until now."

Well, that was getting a bit presumptuous. Using his elbows as leverage - the table groaned under the pressure - he stood up from his seat. "Two things. First off, I'm not a mercenary. Secondly, Rand, I can guarantee you that every last person on Peragus was there because they were trying to get away from something, not because they wanted the job." He turned his head to the side to look at him askance, placing particular emphasis on his last words. "Don't you agree?"

Atton tensed, brow furrowed harshly. Mercer got the distinct impression of a cat flattening its ears against its skull.

"If you're done picking holes apart in my story, we've got nothing more to say here. I'm checking this ship out. If you have something you want to say to me, too bad."

With that, he stalked away from the table, entering the first hallway that presented itself to him and ignoring the pairs of eyes that followed his exit. For a small transport, the Ebon Hawk was a lot bigger on the inside than one would expect at a glance - it had several different rooms and nooks, easily enough space for four people to occupy and maintain their privacy. After a minute's wandering, he found a storage room, empty except for a few cylindrical containers in the corner. There was no reason for anyone to come in there at the moment, so it was perfect for his needs.

He leaned against the wall, exerting enough pressure for his shoulders to buckle the metal slightly. His trademark scowl was etched much deeper than usual.

So. He was on a ship. Not surprising. He was with a group. Notably more surprising, but he wasn't going to be in it for long. Still, having worked with anyone at all for any length of time was atypical of him. He was very much a solitary person; he'd neither had the inclination for social interactions nor the need for others' protection and help.

And then there was the other thing. This Jedi felt much more like Dana than he cared to admit. She had the same spiky hair, the same sarcastic demeanor, the same build... When he'd first seen her approach at the mining tunnels, it had taken everything he had not to keel over backwards. It was like seeing the only person he'd ever cared about rising from the grave.

But Dana had always been fiery and impulsive, whereas this new woman's every move spoke of calculating experience and a burdening past. The way she moved, the way she fought. It was battle-hardened, all of it. And her eyes were dark brown and unfathomable, whereas Dana's had spoken every emotion as clear as daylight.

But why... why the hell did it matter? She wasn't Dana anyways. She was just another human being, another mixture of bones and tendons and meat that had been unfortunate enough to cross his path, and he would be doing her the best favor he could grant by getting out of her way. So she looked a bit like Dana. Her DNA just so happened to provide her with the codes for a similar appearance - deoxyribonucleic acids and proteins all arranged into interlocked double helixes within those fragile cells. Logically, it meant nothing. Logically, he shouldn't have this feeling of... remorse. Of recognition. Those were human flaws, and he had never understood why he was prone to them.

As if in answer, the door creaked open. A look askance told him that it was that old Jedi woman - K something, he wasn't great with names offhand - come to visit. She held one hand to the doorframe to steady herself, seeming notably unbothered by the recent loss of its counterpart.

"Yeah, what do you want?" he muttered, gruff. "Can't I get some peace around here?"

"Peace is hardly what you seek, virus."

His head snapped up at that. Instincts reared up, snarling warnings to him - it took all of his willpower not to shed his human disguise for feeder tendrils or weaponized limbs, and even so, the thought of taking his claws to her and rending her into so much sinew and muscle was by no means abandoned. _Compromised_, his impulses screamed, tentacles writhing underneath his skin like agitated snakes. _Consume her and vanish into a deeper obscurity than before-_

But he was on a ship, he couldn't just leap off into the void of space and be done with things. He forced himself to play things rationally. She had no proof. She probably didn't know what she was talking about.

"What did you call me-"

An empty smile stretched her wrinkled face. "If you fear for what the Exile will think of you, I pity you for allowing such time-worn and false sentiments to cloud your decisions. I allow others to draw their own conclusions. She does not know. None of the others know, nor will they. Not for a time."

"And they don't know what?" he grated, fingers clenching and unclenching at his side.

"I tire of this. You are a terrible actor, for one that wears the cast-off skins of so many others. You cannot hide from me simply by wearing a sentient costume; doing so does not change the beast within. And yet, you interest me, 'Alex'. You are many things, few of them good."

As she watched him through eyes that he was fairly sure were blind, Mercer got the distinct and uncomfortable impression that she was seeing more than just his appearance.

"Arrogant. Convinced of your own immortality, believing yourself as something ultimate. What a tragic assumption, to believe in things such as perfection when you were created farther fallen from that notion than the lowest of worms. Regretful... you harbor some old guilt, buried deep within whatever void you consider a heart. Cast it away. Something such as you has no reason to carry such emotions. But it is, in part, newer than that, is it not? Do you pity those you prey upon, beast? Do you lament the natural order of things? After all of these years? As if a creature like yourself has the capacity for guilt? Your mind is addled beyond belief... Destructive, yes, very much so. This much I've seen for myself. A dying planet finally falls to dust, dooming many others in its implications, and all you can draw from it is carnal enjoyment. Like a fool watching the lights, you give no thought to the workings behind it. Controlled, but barely. Your hunger shines through your eyes and your presence in the Force alike."

Alex was getting annoyed. "You know, I really don't appreciate having people barge into my quarters and start telling me what I am."

"Impulsive," she continued, misty eyes unreadable. "Ancient, possessing of knowledge, but lacking the finesse to use it. No matter what ersatz conscience you build for yourself, you remain a tool for destruction. At the end of the day, when all your pretenses are gone, you are still a wolf in sheep's clothing, slavering over the meat around you. Like a common thug entrusted with protecting a precious library of ancient knowledge; the potential could be there to learn and grow, but you will never rise past your base lusts to accomplish greater things. You're a slave to your nature."

"Would you take off the hood?" Mercer's lips drew back from his teeth. "I really don't want anyone to think that we two have anything in common."

Kreia ignored him. "For centuries, you've wandered without a purpose. But surely you can feel it, virus? War is stirring, war greater than you've known. A war infinitely more consuming than the hell which saw your creation. Alone, you can accomplish nothing but destruction. You exist to kill; of your own imperative, nothing... _constructive _will come. But you have never had a master, even when your nature epitomizes that of the dire hound. You will come to know this. War rises, and you will be a useful tool in determining its outcome, Alex Mercer... or rather, Blacklight."

His knuckles cracked; there it was. "So you know what I am, and waltz in here thinking you can use that to push me around?" Mercer stood up. "'Are you stupid or just crazy? Because if you know that I'm the Blacklight virus, then you also know there's the other option of me devouring you unless you get the fuck out of my room right now."

"I'm nobody's tool," he continued, eyes dark and piercing under the shadows cast by his hood. "Believe me when I say that everyone who's tried to use me has ended up in an early grave. Others have tried to kill me too, but guess what? I'm still standing; they're not. If you think you're the exception, well, come at me. Otherwise, you can take your manipulative therapist act somewhere else."

Kreia hesitated. He gave her a long, hard look for a few seconds, then lifted a fist in a slightly exxagerated gesture. Hestitated - so easily could he ram it through her, watch blood fleck her lips and hear her heave her last ragged gasps, silencing her hateful words forever. He considered this, resigned himself, and flicked up his middle finger.

It wasn't clawing her apart and ripping whatever twisted methods she was using directly from her skull. But it would have to do. For now.

Wordlessly, she turned and swept out of the room, her brown robes slithering over the floor. He glared at the doorway long after she'd left, quietly seething and fighting down the urge to slam his fist into the floor and send spikes up to impale her in the hallway.

"Bitch," he muttered.

Unheard by him, Kreia gave a ghostly chuckle.

How she knew... how _did _she know? Manhattan was an obscure legend at best, and he had been consistent in covering his tracks. But there was something in the way she'd stared at him, like she was staring through him... He grimaced. Damn, was there some sort of Force technique to sift through one's memories? He'd have to keep a closer eye on these Jedi than he'd expected.

And yet... some of the things she'd said...

His eyes narrowed. This crew required much more observation than he'd thought.

"I thought I told you to get the hell out!" he snapped as the door opened again.

Only to bite his tongue as he realized the woman entering was at least fifty years younger than he was expecting and looked a lot more like his sister than anybody had a right to.

"Well, that's a nice greeting," she commented dryly.

"I'm sorry," he said dourly, sounding anything but. "Thought you were that old witch again."

"Kreia?" Deanna gave him a curious look. "Yeah, I can see why you'd act like that. She was talking to me, too." The muscles in his neck tightened, just a fraction. What had she said to her? "I have to say, she freaks me out a little. Sorry that you had to put up with her too. But no, I came to talk about something else."

"Like...?" Mercer was wary. _Like that Kreia hag telling you that I'm a sentient, man-eating virus?_

"I know you said you wanted to be dropped off at the first planet we passed by."

He nodded curtly. "I won't burden you."

Deanna hesitated again, that strange look in her eyes. He felt like squirming. Even after so many centuries, he still found humans enigmatic and difficult to understand. His memories told him of feelings and emotions, so much brighter and vivid than the flickers of sensation he knew, but it was like the difference between reading a book about something and experiencing it firsthand.

"Look," she cut in suddenly. Blunt and to the point. "I've got no idea what the hell you are, and I don't like that. And I think Atton's right when he says you're a little crazy. But you're a good pilot, and a damn good fighter if I've ever seen one. I don't know what the hell happened with that Sith Lord we met, or how you _survived_, much less killed him, but I get the feeling Kreia would have lost more than just her hand if you hadn't staved him off*. I know you think I'm a Jedi, but I've been cut off from the Force for a long time. I don't have the same skills I used to. I admit it, you saved us."

Well, he wasn't going to give her the account of what actually happened. It involved a few too many tentacles to keep his position uncompromised. "Well… thanks, I guess."

"Do you want to stay?"

It was so sudden and unexpected that he was caught off guard. An offer... to stay? Could he afford to do that? Would it be worth the risk? More than that, did this mean she actually _wanted _him around? Now that was territory he'd never breached.

He looked up, and their eyes met for a long moment. This was ridiculous. He was a drifter by nature. Staying in one place - _especially_ with two Jedi, one of whom was some sort of creepy mind-reader who already knew his identity - was bad, notably moreso if some sort of trouble was hunting down the other Jedi for unknown reasons. Well, the trouble wasn't bad, but it had the potential to unearth him to the galaxy if things went _really _wrong, and he wasn't risking his neck for for the sake of some random pack of vagabonds. ...Was he? He had no loyalty to them, no obligations. Nothing more... than a familiar face.

With a sigh, he looked away, giving a stiff nod. "Nothing better to do, I guess. Why not?"

He couldn't bring himself to admit that leaving now would feel far more akin to abandoning his sister than it had any right to be.

* * *

><p>*(This wasn't written. Probably won't be. Might at some time in the future. For now, I'll just explain my canon-screwing. Assume it was Mercer who held off Sion. Kreia let him because she wanted to test out both Mercer and her old protegee. It goes like this. Mercer tentacle-slaughters Sion and assumes he's dead, but obviously Sion isn't because he godmodes, so he walks away with Sion still alive but immobile. Of course, neither Atton nor Deanna sees this take place, but they know something's up if he can hold his own with a Sith Lord for any amount of time. Kreia loses her hand anyway, because that's an important plot point and I wouldn't really want to mess with it.)<p> 


	7. And Then There Were Gizka

Alex Mercer did not like visitors to his cargo hold. As a general rule, if you wanted something from the eldritch abomination, you waited until he surfaced from his dark chambers, or you asked the Exile to talk to him for you.

It seemed like nobody had told that to the banana-yellow lizard thing that was inquisitively poking its head in through the doorway.

For a few seconds, he stared back, waiting for it to make a move. Then it occurred to him that the lizard really had no business being on the ship in the first place. He cocked his head as it scampered up to him, invading his personal space with blatant disregard for its own safety. It looked fairly uninteresting, being a little smaller than a dog and lacking any traits he found interesting in fauna, such as acid sprayers or fiery breath.

_Wonder what it tastes like, _he mused.

It rubbed up against him. He scowled. He had no time for pets.

"Go away," he growled, pushing the creature away from him. It paused for a moment, then went right back to him, emitting a series of high-pitched squeaking sounds.

He shoved it again, harder. The creature was lucky it didn't die as it was sent tumbling halfway to the room's far wall. This second chance at life was immediately wasted as it returned to the ornery viral abomination.

Mercer snarled. He was pretty sure that the Exile had an unspoken no-pets policy, although they did have a tendency to pick up strays of another type. So what the hell was this thing doing around here? His scowl deepened as he got to his feet. Damn it, this meant he had to go and ask somebody about it. He preferred not to talk to anyone whenever possible. Maybe he'd go and find Deanna. She was less annoying than the rest of these stragglers.

The thing followed him to the main room, much more content to trail at his legs than any animal had a right to be.

Atton was sitting at the table, a glass of ale in hand. He looked quite tired. Alex did not care. Very deliberately, he pointed a finger at the rogue, then at the lizard-creature.

"What the hell is this thing?"

Atton sighed. "It's a Gizka. Some douchebag thought it'd be funny to unload a shipment of them on the Hawk, and now they're running rampant."

No sooner had he said this when a similarly haggard-looking Deanna stalked into the room from another hallway. Two more of the irritating Gizka were following her, chittering to each other as they scampered around the woman's legs.

She swore to nobody in particular, then looked up and realized she wasn't alone in the room. Mercer noted her one eye was twitching. That was a telltale sign that her famous temper was reaching its limits.

"I see you've discovered our little infestation," she muttered in lieu of a proper greeting to the two men.

Mercer eyed the creatures trailing behind her. He did not look pleased. She knew that look - god, that first incident on Telos was going to haunt her nightmares for quite some time. In all her experience with the whatever-the-hell-he-was, his current expression invariably led to tentacles thrashing around and indiscriminatory slaughter.

His voice was neutral, but then again, it was always neutral, save for when he was using explosives or when he was talking to Kreia. "Hard to miss. Atton says they're Gizka, but what exactly are they? Can't say I've ever heard of them."

"Space pests. Don't know where they come from, and I really don't care. They're almost impossible to get rid of. They breed like rabbits. And already, they're everywhere. I don't see how we're getting these things off our ship."

"Oh, _really_?"

The Exile did not like Mercer's sudden smile. Not one bit.

She watched as he knelt down and picked up the Gizka by his feet. It seemed pleased by the attention as he held the thing at eye level, scrutinizing it. For a moment, it looked almost like Alex Mercer was holding a pet animal. Almost.

And then he went ahead and rammed his head into the creature's skull.

It collapsed. Violently. Perhaps _exploded _better described the action as scales and red lumps splattered outwards, causing the Exile to step back and Atton to jump out of his chair.

"What the hell was that for?" demanded Deanna.

Mercer seemed inexplicably pleased with himself. "Just checking the consistency of their skeletons. I'd rate it somewhere between 'toothpick' and 'dandelion stem'. Very satisfying snap, although I wish I could put in a little more effort. Well then," and he cracked his knuckles in a distinctly businesslike fashion, "I'm going to have a talk with you later about letting people unload shipments of animals onto the Hawk. This isn't a zoo. For now, I may as well take advantage of the buffet."

The two exchanged a glance as Alex made his way out of the room. Was he... _whistling?_

"Goddamnit," swore Atton.

"Well, on second thought, I think we might have found a solution to our Gizka problem." The Exile hardly seemed satisfied about this. If anything, she looked particularly green.

"Yeah, but it's not like we're ever gonna get the bloodstains out..."


	8. Confessions

Not for the first time, Deanna had called a meeting. As customary, everyone in the Hawk had met in the main chamber. The circle around the table had grown considerably since the last instance with the addition of Visas, Mira, and Bao-Dur, but there was still enough room.

Visas's subtle flinch preceded the last person's arrival at the makeshift conference room – even now, she still couldn't entirely mask her discomfort in his presence. Today, Deanna decided, was time to put her foot down and find out _why_.

She was fairly certain that Alex wouldn't have shown up if he knew what she intended. Looking as bored as ever, he pulled up an empty chair and slid onto it lazily. "All right, so what's this about?" Mercer, as usual, was gruff.

"Wouldn't mind knowing that myself," Atton added. "I had to stall the ship – the longer we wait, the longer it's going to take for us to get to Dantooine."

"I wanted to cover this before we land," Deanna began. "We're looking for Master Vrook – trust me, he is not the friendliest or most forgiving man. I guarantee you, when he feels Mercer's presence there, he's going to go straight on the warpath. I could say that I want to have an explanation for him so it won't end in somebody getting killed… but really, I'd be lying. I've been staving off this question ever since we met at Peragus. Your presence alone is enough to make any Force-sensitives run away screaming. I've seen you wrench a durasteel turret out of the perch it was welded to – and then throw it _through_ a mercenary. We've all seen the claws. And the tentacles. Dear god, the tentacles. You've never exactly made it a secret that you aren't human, but you always evade the question when it gets brought up. Well, I think we've waited long enough. Alex Mercer, what exactly _are_ you?"

The man in question stood up as abruptly as he'd sat down. "Yeah, well, tough luck. If that's it, everyone, you're dismissed."

Nobody moved. "I think we have a right to know what we're travelling with," Deanna stated flatly.

"And I think I've got a right to my secrets," Alex retorted, turning to leave.

Kreia, who had been silent up until this point, looked up; her hood shifted slightly, revealing her oddly luminous, milky eyes under the shadows.

"The time has arrived," she said coldly. "Stall no longer. If you do not tell them, _beast_, I shall do so myself, and I will not be so lenient about your past misdeeds."

Mercer swore, swiveling back around. "Goddammit, you old hag, get the hell out of my business! Who gave you the right to start fucking around with my head?"

Deanna's eyes narrowed at the exchange. "Beast?"

Ice-blue eyes slid over to meet hers. "I have some issues with the witch over here. Chiefly, that I'm not allowed to tear her face off. She's a security threat, a manipulative bitch, and an all-around asshole, and really, I think she'd look much better if she was on fire and falling off one of Nar Shaddaa's skyscrapers."

Atton was glaring at Kreia. "Wait. She _knows?_ The old witch already knew whatever the deal with Mercer is, and she didn't tell us?"

"All of your secrets are mine, fool. Or do you not remember?" At this, Atton flinched. "Did you think you were the only one I knew? His past belongs to me as well. I hardly need to share it with an imbecile such as yourself. The Exile, however… her destiny is greater. She needs to know the true nature of this tool she has at her disposal. Who she wishes to share it with, I care not."

"See?" Alex shot. "Manipulative bitch. Please, get working on breaking that Force bond thing so we can jettison her into space."

"Mercer isn't a tool." Deanna frowned at the terminology. "He's a member of the crew, a person."

At this, Kreia laughed. "You delude yourself on all counts."

"Enough." The hooded man was getting angry. "You want to know the truth? A little advice. The truth always_, always_ sucks, and when you do figure it out, you wish you hadn't. Remember that."

"We've earned the right to know," the Exile repeated steadily.

Abruptly, Alex sighed. "Fine, fine. If I told you I was a magical pink unicorn in disguise, would you believe me?"

"No, because unicorns don't have fucking_ tentacles_."

In spite of everything, a small smile quirked his lips. "Well, at least you're not a total idiot. Heh… I can't believe I'm actually about to say this. This is a first, that's for damn sure. Well, if I'm going to go to hell, may as well do so of my own volition, right? All right, everyone, listen up. Or don't. But either way, I'm not telling this story twice. I'd ask you not to repeat this knowledge to anyone, but let's face it, I don't trust you to listen to that, and I have my doubts you're going to trust me – if you ever did – after this."

The silence was an expectant one.

"Well, let's get this fucking over with. Before I begin, I've got to ask – has anyone here ever heard of Manhattan?"

"Who?"

Mercer shook his head in exasperation. "Not who, where. It's a place."

"Manhattan or Manaan? If-"

"Manhattan. Look, I know what I'm saying. And it's a city, not a planet."

There were a few shrugs and blank stares.

Mira leaned back in her chair. "You know, I think I heard another bounty hunter mention that name once. Something about a target that kept evading him. Said it was like trying to catch a zeus in Manhattan. Weird saying, which is why I remember it. Guy was also a terrible duelist. Excellent tracker, but couldn't hold his own in a fair fight. Ended up getting killed in a bad match setup… he owed me credits, too."

"Zeus. Yeah, that's Manhattan, all right." He looked vaguely satisfied with that. Anonymity was good, but he couldn't deny he liked the thought of completely detached fame, just a little.

"What's a zeus?" asked Deanna.

"There's only one Zeus, thankfully, or otherwise the galaxy would be pretty fucked overall. Zeus is two things. He's the chief god in some old human pantheon, and more importantly, happens to be the rather apt codename given to me back in my glory days."

The Exile narrowed her eyes. "Explain."

"What happened there is a legend at best these days… and not a very well-known one. But every legend has some basis of truth to it. Listen… hey, T3-M4. Can you run a search on Manhattan? It might help outline the whole fiasco that makes up my past."

The droid, which had been in the corner of the room, slid up next to Mercer. He beeped several affirmatives and activated a holoscreen above his disc-shaped head.

Alex motioned for T3 to scroll. "Hmm, all right… what?" he muttered to himself as he sifted through the sites found. "What? Seriously? What the – _fuck _no, what the hell is this crap? Since when can I shoot lasers? Okay, now I'm _glad_ none of you know what Manhattan is, since none of this information is even remotely accurate. "

Mira, who was seated closest to him, leaned in to get a better look at T3's projection. "Serial tentacle rapist?" she read.

Mercer swatted her away. "I assure you, all tentacle rape I've committed was done in a strictly non-literal sense, in the venue of beating the shit out of somebody. Figure of speech. Not hentai. That one's all on humanity and your collective twisted mind."

After a bit more poring, he sighed. "Thanks, T3, but it's no good. You can take it down now." The droid obeyed and rolled back. Mercer folded his hands on his lap. "Okay, let's start wider. Have you ever heard of Earth?"

"Um, yeah?" The Exile lifted an eyebrow. "This isn't special education class, you know."

"Just checking. Anyway, what I'm about to tell you took place there. Relatively speaking, a pretty long time ago, back when it was mostly habitable and there was still a considerable amount of greenery left. Not where I was, mind. There was a city, one of the most densely populated ones on the planet… Manhattan. That's where everything began."

"It was… well, I can say 2009, but we didn't use the same time system you all do now, so that doesn't mean much. Let's just say there was a man. A scientist, and a rather brilliant one at that. Also highly sociopathic. His name was... Alexander Mercer. Yes, I _know_ that's my name, I'll explain everything," he snapped as Deanna opened her mouth.

"He worked at a company called Gentek, in biological engineering. Specifically, virology. He was part of a team that was working on Blacklight, a manmade offshoot derived from another pathogen known as Redlight. Creative names, I know. Anyway, for whatever reason, they had found a deadly disease and wanted to ramp it up to eleven. And that was something that Mercer was very, very skilled at. But he was also a very observant person. He noticed things. Results were disappearing. People were disappearing.

"He searched, and he didn't like what he uncovered. He found some names – an organization, something called Blackwatch. A string of disappearances rather than a few scattered ones, all connected. People who knew too much were simply there one day and gone the next… and Doctor Alexander J. Mercer knew plenty.

"But he had a trump card. The Blacklight virus itself – who would touch him when he could unleash hell upon the world? He needed to disappear on his own volition, and he had found the perfect ticket to ensure his safety there. He arranged some flights and a false identity, and when the time came, smuggled a vial of the partly-finished compound from his labs.

"So with his 'insurance' in hand, he went to Penn Station – a large terminal, among other things. But Blackwatch was waiting for him. They cornered him. Threats were tossed, guns were lifted. Shots were fired. Mercer was hit, fatally.

"He wasn't the type to go peacefully. There was nothing left for him to gain, but he was a narcissist. A god among men, in his blinded eyes. If he didn't have the right to exist, then neither should anyone else... In a fit of rage at the world, in a last gesture of petty defiance, he threw down the vial and released the Blacklight virus. He tried to damn the world with his last breath, and that's how I was born.

"The virus was meant to destroy everyone, but when you screw with science, sometimes it screws back with you. Things don't go as planned. Unforeseen consequences. In this case, the virus… well, everyone in the vicinity died. But it didn't spread. It could have – trust me, I've seen enough. But for whatever reason, it didn't. It absorbed his body. It became him. It _recreated_ him. Instead of causing an apocalyptic plague, it created a monster."

"A few hours later, I woke up in a morgue, with no memories other than my name, no realization that I was anything other than human, and no idea why the hell a bunch of people suddenly wanted to kill me."

And from there, he went on to tell everything – to relive those first days that had defined his entire long life onwards. At least, he kept things mostly accurate. He opted to leave out Dana for personal reasons, and he stumbled over consuming, trying to mention it and the resultant information as little as possible. It seemed highly unlikely that _that_ detail would be taken unflinchingly by his new allies. He managed well enough to write off his shapeshifting as stemming elsewhere, or so he thought. But he forced himself to admit to the rest of everything – his mistakes, his murders. He told them what he knew about Blackwatch and Gentek, of Elizabeth Greene and Pariah, of the parasite and the Supreme Hunter, of Redlight and Blacklight, of finding out his powers – sans one – and the long and bloody struggle that had culminated in his unlikely but successful attempt to save Manhattan from getting wiped off the map.

"And along the way, I realized I wasn't really Alex Mercer at all – just an over-evolved disease wearing his face. A facsimile," he finished. "But by the time I learned that, it was almost a relief. It was all my fault, but I wasn't even _me_ anymore."

Deanna didn't really know what to say. "So who are you, then?"

"Alex Mercer," he replied promptly. "That's the only identity I ever had. The only one that I believed in, if only for a small span of time. Besides, it's not like the real guy needs it now."

The first of several awkward silences unfolded.

"So," and he leaned back, although coiled tension was still visible in the set of his neck, "any questions?"

"So, let me get this straight." Mira laid her hands on the table. "Earth. Back when… what, they didn't even have a space program? Just how old are you?"

"About six hundred. Start calling me 'grandpa' and I'll kill you."

There was a long and generally stunned silence.

"And I thought the witch over there was old," Atton muttered, shaking his head. "Seriously?"

"You don't look it," Mira said critically. Alex just shrugged.

Visas, surprisingly, was the next to speak up – normally, she remained entirely silent in Alex's intimidating presence. "Your aura in the Force is…" she trailed off. "I do not know how to describe what it is that I saw, yet surely you feel it yourself."

"I'm not a natural being. I won't lie, I really don't understand your so-called Force. But I don't think my creator had it in mind when he was finishing the fine-tuning on what eventually escaped its petri dish and became me."

"Your body speaks of more than emptiness. It is, in essence, a black hole, something that has devoured the souls of others. I can see them within you."

"That's probably because they're there. In a way," he added, voice tense and strained.

Deanna folded her hands, drumming her fingers. Alex's usual lazy facade was nearly transparent - she could see the stress lines on his face, the way his jaw muscles strained against his neck. "You mentioned consuming people," she noted, none too gently.

Mercer's eyes narrowed. Apparently, he didn't like this question either.

"…It's how I sustain myself," he admitted unhappily. "It doesn't have to be _people_, specifically, but I'd be lying if I said I kept my diet free of them. It's not something I can avoid. Without the biomass of living creatures, I can't repair myself, and I will burn myself out over time and die. I want to live, so I eat. Don't fault me for that."

The silence following this was much, much more shocked. And not without a fair current of horror.

"You eat _people_," Atton corrected, stunned. "Oh, this is fucking wonderful. Pure pazaak. So, who's first on the menu? Shall I go slather myself in barbeque sauce for the landing party?"

The eldritch abomination's eyes narrowed further, and he cracked his knuckles.

Kreia spoke before he could retort, her voice harsh and perversely amused. "Oh, none of you. No, the creature likes to pretend that it's a person. I have attempted to convince it otherwise before, but it seems to enjoy clinging to its pretty delusions. Regardless, its inherent violence makes it a highly suitable tool in the war that is to come, and whatever make-believe games it wishes to play with itself matter little in the scope of its efficacy."

"I have had enough of this bullshit." Alex stood up suddenly, the table clattering with the impact. "And if you don't mind, that's enough goddamn storytelling for today. If you're done inspecting me like some curio, I'd like to call it a day."

The viral monstrosity very deliberately wound around the circle of watching eyes and left the main room, his steps as carefree as your average towering storm cloud.

Mira whistled once he was _presumably_ out of earshot. "Some story, all right."

"If by story, you mean 'I don't think I'm going to sleep for weeks,' you got that damn right. Wait." Atton paused. "Fuck! I was sharing a _dormitory_ with him for a month! God, that's just…"

"I do not know what to think," Visas confessed. "We are made as we are, and yet still, I feel as though a being such as him should have never existed. Even if I _understand_… you have not seen the screaming void where the Force should flow. It is… as he put it, unnatural."

These comments were only dimly noted by Deanna, who watched him go uneasily. That should have been it – she'd gotten what she wanted from him, and he knew that – but she couldn't shake the feeling that even after uncovering this strange backstory, she was still missing something important.

"Kreia, you shouldn't have said that."

The old woman turned to face her, her mouth a thin line on her withered face. "The truth does not cease to exist simply by willing it to be something else."

The Exile would have argued the point further, but the forgotten point came to her quite rapidly, and she made a snap decision. "Wait here," she instructed the rest of the crew, glancing at the corridor through which an upset Mercer had left. "I want to wrap something up."

Bao-Dur, who'd been silently listening up until this point, coughed. "Are you sure that's wise, General? I think he made it clear he didn't want company."

"It'll only be a minute."

She could practically feel the worry radiating from most of the crew, but she ignored it. She couldn't leave this subject in such a terrible place. Besides, she suspected that beneath his general dour mood, the… man? Virus? Something between the two? She wasn't sure what to think, but it had always seemed like he had some inexplicable soft spot for her. As soft as he got, anyway.

She ducked into his makeshift quarters. A shadow stood stiffly by the wall, stepping forward after a moment's hesitation.

"What is it now?" Mercer rolled his eyes. In the wan light of the cargo hold, the Exile could see that the man looked considerably more stressed than he had before. His face was drawn, and the circles under his eyes seemed deeper than she remembered. "Come to extort some more information out of me with that goddamn hag of yours?

"I'm sorry…" she began.

"No, you're not." His voice was inflectionless. "You'd do it again if you had to. That's what you need to be able to do in this business, isn't it? It's been a long time, but I haven't forgotten." He turned away. "You wanted to know. Well, you've got it. You know, I've devoted my entire life to secrecy. Now you all hold six centuries worth of garnered obscurity in the palm of your hand. One slip and I'll have the whole galaxy on my ass, and there will be _nothing_ you can do to take that back."

She blinked, hard. "Are you _frightened?_"

Alex sighed. "It's not so much that I'm afraid of what they can _do_ to me, as… They'd never leave me alone. I don't want to run. I've had to hide before. It's endless. There's no respite. I've done it before, and I don't want to live like that again. It doesn't help that technology is a hell of a lot sharper than it was in those days."

Deanna frowned. She had to approach this carefully. "I understand. I won't lie, they might not listen to you, but they'll hear me out. I'll get them to swear your past to secrecy, I promise. Listen… look, I'd be lying if I said I liked what I was hearing. I'm going to have to admit, you sound a lot closer to a walking biological apocalypse than I'm comfortable with. I've heard of a lot of strange things, and seen the true face of war, but this… well, this tops it. It's like one of those old horror films, but real."

He shrugged. "What can I say? The truth sucks. I'd forget mine in a heartbeat if I could."

"That it does," she agreed, her mind on her own history. "But I truly appreciate your honesty. And okay, so I'm frightened. Somewhat. I'm sure you're used to that. It doesn't change that you've fought on our side, for us. You're one of us. A member of the crew. This doesn't change that.

"Even if you're desperately trying to convince yourself of that fact?" he needled.

"Even if I am," she confirmed with a nod, refusing to be daunted by his skepticism.

Mercer looked at her, and the hints of what might have been the first real smile she'd ever seen from him were visible on his face.

"Thanks."


End file.
